


Princeling

by amberwing



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, M/M, mage!sebastian, sebastian and his waffle iron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwing/pseuds/amberwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Vael is a prince. He is also a mage. The two do not coincide well--in fact, they seem to result in being shipped off to confinement in uncomfortable foreign places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acidaran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidaran/gifts).



> Inspired by a beautiful piece of artwork by The Resident Devil on tumblr.

Sebastian thought the silence would be the worst part.  The Chantry is by nature a quiet place, its emptiness barely disturbed by the murmur of mass. He's used to the ever-present bird squabble of court and the rowdy cacophony of marketplaces; even the cathedral in Starkhaven was loud, always full of parishioners and priestesses, visiting dignitaries and local nobles.  The Prince had his own row of seats in the nave, closest to the sanctuary.  Sebastian can remember kneeling before the Revered Mother as she daubed the Vaels' brows with holy water, wishing he were a few rows back, where talking during mass wasn't going to earn him a lecture.

 It didn't help that the Revered Mother smelled of old sweat and too much rosewater.  That's something that will never fade from memory.  Nor will his father's face when Sebastian's magic came.

 Magic, Sebastian has come to understand, is the dirtiest secret a royal family can have. The debauchery, the bribes, the politicking and boot-licking—it's all nothing compared to the ice in Sebastian's breath, the fire in his veins.  Everything changed in such a way that he _still_ can't quite describe it, no matter the time in meditation "suggested" to help "calm" him.  Meditation is another chance to listen.  It's another chance to avoid the empty hallways inside of him, echoing with the clatter of Fade-memories, so much like the horseshoe sound of the nobility's shoes against marble floors.

 The Vael family is incapable of having a mage child.  It doesn't matter that he's not even a spare— _magic_ is not a Starkhaven thing.  The Circle is not a solution here. People would know. The First Enchanter, whom Prince Vael had never referred to with any fondness, would not keep the secret. The scandal! The _power_ to be had in knowing and blackmailing the Prince about his defective son.

 Sebastian had been sixteen.  Late for magic to come, but at least, Grandfather had said with a sigh, Sebastian had had some time to be free. To live as a man—if not nearly enough rounds with the castle maids could be considered "living as a man".

 Sebastian almost wishes he'd gotten it sooner, so he wouldn't have so much to miss. Kirkwall's ordained sisters are dour creatures; the stock here has its root in the flotsam of the Free Marches and the jetsam of Rivain, and not the interesting pirates and hedge-witches he heard about back home. He can't even guess at how hefty their bosoms are without them somehow _feeling_ it, by some preternatural sixth sense, and then demanding what he's doing outside of his cell.

 It's the smell of Kirkwall, of salt and iron and filth, and the way its citizens speak, flat and harsh as the cliffs the city clings to, that make Sebastian miss Starkhaven. It's the rough fabric of his lay brother’s robes and the cold that seeps into his cell at night. He is a Vael. But, he is a mage. In the end, the mage part of him wins out in his treatment.

 It's still summer, but Kirkwall is on the sea and the chantry is a warren of stone. Sebastian never truly escapes the chill. His cot creaks underneath him as he turns, curling in on himself to try and warm his hands. He's losing his bow-calluses. 

 A great sigh heaves out of him, and he turns over. The candle on his desk flickers to life at the barest beckoning motion of a finger, spreading pale icicles of light across the chamber. The candle won't warm him, but it'll make him feel better. Perhaps. What are his options, really? He can lie in the dark bemoaning his station, or lie in the candlelight and read the Chant until Ser Perrine comes to check on him.

 The smell of magic stops him from snuffing the candle again. His hand freezes in midair, the flame nearly licking his fingertips. The scent isn't—well, he's wrong to name it a _smell_ in the first place, as it's more of an all-body sensation, starting in the tiniest of hairs at his brow and tiptoeing down his cheeks, lips, tracing his tongue with astringency and warmth and the faintest sweetness. Maker, it's the closest thing to liquor he's touched in months.

 He's tempted to call it a fluke. Some Circle-trained healer has been called in by the Grand Cleric. One of the sisters must have caught that cough that's been going through the congregation; it's not all that surprising, given how many attend Sunday mass. Sebastian has lately become intimately aware of how much work the mages of the Gallows actually do for the Chantry—how much _he_ has to do. As a "lay brother", he has his special duties for his keepers: casting petty healings for grips and ague and sisters' rheumatism.

This magic doesn't cease as a healer's would. Sebastian draws his breath in slowly, and then lets it out again. Calculations dart through his mind; when did Perrine pass last? Sebastian was ushered to his cell at the ninth bell, and the night guard passes every hour. 

 Sometime past one, he estimates.  It was Perrine's last clanking, grousing check in that had broken Sebastian's fitful doze, which means he has at last thirty minutes to investigate. It's not a question that he will. He knows the ins and outs of the chantry. After being incarcerated there for five years, who wouldn't? He's been picking the lock on his cell since his first week—had been caught trying to haggle for passage to Antiva and dragged back, saddled with Ser Perrine and Ser Yannick.

 A pair of templars in the chantry isn't anything to remark upon, after all. Sebastian will never be able to escape that metal lyrium hum of them, that pressure in his sinuses they always bring, daring him to rebel.

 Oh, he dares. _Carefully_.

 The magic fills his lungs with every breath, with its electricity, its energy, its desire, tickling at the very edges of his senses and begging for him to reach out with his own, entangle fingers with the bright flicker of it. He licks his lips and slides his legs from under the sheets, snuffing the candle again. His robes are folded neatly on the bedside table, and he pulls them on silently, followed by his thin-soled shoes. The door rattles a bit on its hinges in the draft as Sebastian stands beside it, listening intently for any sign of Perrine.

 His younger self had been so proud of having learned how to use lock picks, though he didn't get many opportunities to use the knowledge. Sebastian shakes his head, resting his fingertips against the deadbolt and giving a delicate magical shove. It gives a soft, well-oiled sound of metal sliding, and then opens at his push.

 The halls of the dormitory are black and cold. Sebastian stands still, letting his eyes adjust and the pressure of foreign magework align his path. On other nights, he's tiptoed his way to the gardens, bruising thyme and elfroot on his way to Lowtown. It's taken some time, but Perrine isn't much of a watchdog these days. Sebastian's willingness to submit to the woman's bluster and spittle during their first few months together has painted him as the perfect little prisoner—and if she seems moody, Sebastian knows how to get her favourite Antivan brandy. As long as he doesn't make a ruckus, she's quite happy to pretend she doesn't see his rumpled sheets or see him sneaking out from the corner of her eye.

 Now, he is guided up the stairs, towards the storage rooms of incense and candles, robes and statuary in need of mending. Magic tugs at him like a lodestone. He remembers his tutor showing him a magnet work its own peculiar magic on a pile of iron filings, except that's not _magic_ , that's science. And yet Sebastian can make metal move just as easily, if he wills it. What is the line between them? Where does reality end and the Fade begin?

 He pauses again at the small door that separates the living quarters of the dedicates and the vestibule. The foreign mage's power ebbs and grows like a heartbeat, steady, calm, and Sebastian finds himself breathing in time to it. He can feel their movement.

 Their _anger_. Light explodes behind Sebastian's eyes, like a firecracker set off inside of his skull. Pain-brightness-rage-fear-guilt- _how no why_ —

The Veil shudders around him, and its all Sebastian can do not to fall. He scrabbles at the backing of the door, bugger to whatever noise he makes, as his knees buckle underneath him. The weight of power in the air is too heavy, too much to bear. Oh, Maker, oh, Andraste and all her disciples, his skull is in a vice of someone—some _thing_ —else's hands, blurring his thoughts and his self and—

  _No_. _No, not this, not now._

 Sebastian finds himself. He is shaking, and his breath rattles out between his teeth in a hiss. He can feel sweat pooling in the small of his back—a tiny, strange detail that he fixates on as his head swims and the room spins. There is screaming outside the doors. The air is thick with bitterness and herbs, smoke and blood. Fear blooms inside of Sebastian like an arrow wound. This isn't a healer. This is an attack. He hangs there, his weight balanced against the doorknob, his lungs heaving, until the sound of something heavy and metallic crashing to the ground startles him.

 He cracks the door open, and finds himself trying to shove a dead templar out of the way. The corpse is crushed so awfully that Sebastian isn't sure a body could even be extracted from the armour; something huge has impacted the silverite into its wearer's chest with such force that the breastplate has curved in with the broken ribs, and blood spreads on the floor beneath it.  The smell of magic and ozone is suddenly a miasma, strong enough to make Sebastian's stomach clench.

 The vestibule is lit by wild flares of light. One moment it's the near-comforting flicker of flame, but then it flickers blue, blue and hot as lyrium in its tiny glass vials, singing with that terrible heaviness in Sebastian's head. He looks upward and finds the vaulted ceiling shrouded by smoke.  Blades clash, and someone cries out: 

"Hawke!"

 Logic and self-preservation dictate that he turn around, lock himself back in his cell, and pretend he didn’t see anything. And yet, the thought sours his gut more than the crumpled templar beside him. Sounds of battle echo through the chapel—voices screaming out in pain and fury, metal scraping against metal, and the hiss and warp of breath.

 The smell of flesh burning isn’t one he ever thought he’d become familiar with. But there it is, an awful, meaty scent, as he skirts the staircase, back to the wall. The light pitches and weaves in nauseating waves. An arrow spits out into the open air, finding a mark somewhere on the opposite side of the room with an ominous _thunk_.

 Another body crashes down, nearly on top of him. Sebastian stifles himself with a fist in his mouth, because suddenly he really, _really_ does not want to be discovered by whatever is above. From the cloak and insignia, this templar was of some rank, and he has a staff-shaped hole driven straight through his sternum. A dagger is stuck through one of the eyeholes of his helmet, like a party favor.

 Sebastian takes the dagger. It’s hot to the touch, as if the templar’s body has boiled within his armor. He wipes it on the man’s singed, blood-splattered skirts and does not wish him well on his way.

 He stills at the base of the stairs as silence falls. The blue light burns, blazes, and then winks out, and the aching, gaping hole of the Fade slides quietly shut again within Sebastian’s ribs. The relief of it is almost painful. In the sudden darkness, there comes a sound like a sob.

 Curiosity and fear mingle with the taste of magic in his mouth. Sebastian counts the seconds as they go by, straining to make sense of the muffled conversation. He can’t. Their voices are muted by distance and secrecy. Whoever they are, they don’t want to attract any more attention—not that there’s any chance they haven’t been heard by now. If Sebastian were in their shoes—preferably not, as much as he wishes he _could_ cleave through templars like a spoon through porridge—he would be absconding. Now.

 He believes in the Maker. After all, who else could think of such a cruel joke as having magic in a world that has no place for it? The more Sebastian listens to the Chant, the more he sees the hypocrisy of it, the twists and turns and loops of Andraste’s journey more like magic than anything based in the mundane.

 Sebastian believes in the Maker, because only He would grant such a grand opportunity for escape.

 The sound of movement stills the whirring of Sebastian’s mind like a pin into a clock’s cogs. He holds his breath as shadowy figures streak past. His eyes are still adjusting from the lights, and so the attackers are reduced to blurred silhouettes, here and gone.

 They do not see him. Sebastian hears the great door creak faintly, and then thump shut. He swallows, listens, and hears raised voices from the dormitories below.

 The templar on the floor before him is a mess. Sebastian’s fingers are shaking so hard that it takes him several tries to get the ruined breastplate undone. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get a dead man’s clothes off, but here he is, struggling to unhitch the man’s jerkin, frantically undoing greaves and sabatons to get at the soft under-leggings.

 He doesn’t even try to get his robes onto the dead templar, just rubs them in the blood and char and throws them into the dark. Armour is thrown haphazardly back atop the body, no buckling, no time. Footsteps are clamoring below and above and Sebastian’s teeth are clenched so hard he can feel his jaw creaking. The clothes are too big, made for someone with twice as much muscle, and the leggings threaten to fall off his arse as he sprints for the doors.

 The air outside the chantry is several degrees warmer, wet and heavy in his lungs as he scrambles down the stairs. He hears shouts of horror behind him, muffled by the thick wooden doors, and they spur him on.

 His many nights sneaking to Lowtown have never run through the front courtyard, but he knows there are alleyways waiting to embrace him just beyond, crevices just deep enough to swallow up another apostate.


	2. Chapter 2

The dagger is the finest weapon Sebastian has handled since his grandfather’s bow. The blade is silverite with a barbed edge, and its leather-wrapped hilt is built a little too small for Sebastian’s hand. A fat, wine-dark garnet is set in the pommel, its facets as sharp as the cutting edge. When he places it on the battered, heat-cracked counter of the weapon dealer’s stall, regret almost overcomes his hunger pangs.

The dealer is a squat, leathery Rivaini with gold canines, her hair pulled back under a red scarf. She eyes him, and then all of her attention is diverted to the blade. Sebastian leaves his hand on the hilt, unable to keep from feeling a bit possessive. It is, after all, the only thing he’s truly owned since Starkhaven.

“Where did you get that?” the dealer asks, her voice sharp. Her hand darts out to touch the blade, and Sebastian slides it back. The metal makes a soft, sad sound against the wood.

“Do you really want to know?” he replies, and the dealer’s fingers arch atop their resting place, like a disgruntled spider. She cocks an eyebrow at Sebastian and smirks, gold teeth gleaming.

“I would _really_ like to know what you plan to do with it,” she drawls, pulling her hand back and ducking it below the counter. Sebastian watches, his back tense, until the dealer pulls out an apple. He doesn’t relax.

“You’re an intelligent woman,” Sebastian says. “You know a fine piece when you see one—and someone who’s looking to bargain, I’m sure.”

The dealer doesn’t reply for a long moment, merely spinning the apple against her tented fingertips. It spins lopsidedly, nearly falling off the edge of the counter. Sebastian feels exposed, despite this being the darkest, dingiest corner of the Lowtown market, as far away from the guards’ patrols as he can manage. Sunlight crawls slowly through the tattered awnings overhead, catching the dull steel and iron of the dealer’s wares and turning them bright as her teeth.

The display stock is not heartening. Sebastian knows he’s going to get scalped.

“Ten silvers,” the dealer says at last, and the words are grating.

“This is worth ten _sovereigns_ ,” he insists.

The dealer sniffs and takes a bite of her apple. Chewing noisily, she taps at the tip of the blade with a nail. Bits of fruit spray as she says, “This isn’t silverite. It’s plated. Noble flimflammery.”

Sebastian rubs his forehead, wiping a bit of apple off, trying not to think about how _fantastic_ it would be to have an apple of his own right now. Or even the core of an apple. Something to make his stomach feel less like a dead bug curled up in the farthest corner of his gut. “Look,” he tells her, picking up the dagger and holding it across his palms. The weight of it is comforting. _Don’t get attached._ “I’m willing to haggle. Eight sovereigns.”

Her nostrils flare. “ _One_ sovereign.”

“Seven.”

The exchange goes on until Sebastian has—to his deepest regret—gotten two sovereigns and a paltry handful of silvers and copper bits, laid out on the counter in the most pitiful display of lost potential wealth he’s ever seen. But he doesn’t dare take the thing to a more savory vendor, where they’re likely to ask him where he—a tall, dirty, disheveled man wearing ripped, bloody, filth-encrusted underclothes—found any kind of weapon that isn’t a rusted spike.

_Well, serah, I got it out of the eye socket of a dead templar last night—and no, I didn’t put it there, I just saw it go in._

He’s still a little surprised he hasn’t been killed or arrested yet. He spent the remains of the night after his escape in an anxious half-doze, squeezed into a damp crevice full of unnamable stenches, waiting for a shiv in the gut or shackles around his wrists.

He’s dead—at least in the eyes of the chantry, which means tracking him by his phylactery won’t even occur to them. That’s the first step to being a free man. A free _mage_. An apostate. Potential maleficarum, really.

The second step is coin, which now sits gleaming before him. Being a Vael has meant Sebastian has never felt poverty; even in the chantry, he was kept in only modest discomfort, as befitting any penitent, low-ranking lay brother. The Vaels had been paying a handsome tithe to the Grand Cleric for her discretion in all matters Sebastian, however; he’d learned this from Ser Yannick when the templar had been feeling particularly smug. It’s certain the royal stipend could have afforded him a larger, warmer cell—but, Yannick had lamented, spreading his gauntlets in that universal gesture of helplessness that was so out of place when girded in silverite, a lay brother doesn’t need all of that. _Oaths of poverty, you know. Got to really feel the cold to appreciate when it isn’t around, lad. Brings you closer to the Maker._

Sebastian knows. He knows the cold down to his bones, liked breathing it on Yannick’s scalp when the old man dozed off beside Sebastian’s door, just soft and quiet enough to kill the follicles and build a bald spot. Small victories, thank Andraste.

The third step is information.

The dealer spits out the skeletal remains of the apple’s core as she reaches for the dagger. Sebastian’s hand comes to rest atop hers, stilling it on the dagger’s hilt. Her skin feels like old vellum pulled tight over the bone, scraped again and again to make way for new prayers. The dealer freezes, and Sebastian hears her breath catch in her throat, a bare moment of weakness before her other hand is moving under the table. “Let go,” the dealer says quietly. She’s probably got a knife dipped in something vicious below.

“You’re getting a fantastic deal on this,” Sebastian tells her, and the upward crawl of her eyebrows doesn’t dispute it. “And I’m in a bit of a pinch. I won’t harm you, I just need—” he adds hurriedly, and that draws a bark of laughter out of her. The shiv Sebastian had known was waiting underneath makes its appearance, fast as a weasel out of a chicken coop, and strikes for him.

Knowing about it doesn’t make it any easier not to get hit by it. He swings himself to the right, coins flying off the counter in a blinding spray, and the shiv catches the billow of his too-large sleeve. The momentum of the blade through dirty cotton feels like stitches under a healer’s numb: a faraway, dull _tug_ before the fabric rips. Sebastian catches himself on the counter, arching himself as far away from the shiv as he can—except it’s caught in the tangle of his lost sleeve, and the dealer is half-sprawled over the counter trying to free it. Rivaini curses spill out of her, replaced by a high yelp as Sebastian lunges back to grab her wrists, his body spilling awkwardly over the remaining coins and his own stolen dagger. The pommel’s garnet digs into his ribs as he forces her arms down against the wood, and cold silvers and sovereigns tickle his navel. The shiv falls from her grip, landing on the dusty stones with a sleeve-muffled whump.

It’s messy and awkward and his old armsmaster would have boxed his ears for the stupidity of getting into the situation in the first place. Sebastian hasn’t fought in five years. His body feels alien in movement, as if the muscles have become unbound from their ligaments and sinew in the interim. Something is shaking inside of him, fear and exhilaration and something larger, something hot and giddy as magic.

_Be proud; I’ve still got it in me to overpower an old woman._

Said old woman is glaring like a just-unhooded falcon: a bit crazed, a bit shocked. Her head is very close to Sebastian’s, and he can smell the apple on her breath. “I was just,” Sebastian explains softly, “going to ask for some directions.”

The dealer gives a hoarse, choking laugh, her thin arms shaking under Sebastian’s grip. “Sure,” she says. “Sure. Whatever you want. Just—please, don’t hurt me.”

The giddiness is gone such speed that it leaves an ache in its wake. Sebastian nearly recoils, has to stop himself from releasing the dealer’s arms. Of course she thought Sebastian was going to kill her—just as Sebastian has thought everyone in Lowtown will kill _him_. And yet the reality of that, of being just another deranged drifter willing to murder someone for coin is a kick in the gut.

That’s it, then. Step four.

“I need directions to a clothier who won’t ask too many questions,” Sebastian forces himself to say, looking her in the eye. “And information, about someone who used to frequent the Hanged Man.”

It takes Sebastian several days to actually _get_ to the Hanged Man—not for lack of trying. Paranoia isn’t his strong suit, but he spends some time with it, rolling it like a worry stone, finding every nook and cranny where something is going to go wrong. He’s going to be discovered. He’s going to be killed. _Both_.

It’s slow going when he half-expects every man, elf, or dwarf he passes to suddenly _smell_ the escape attempt on him; he imagines his inherent _apostate-ness_ as a perfume and starts tucking his hard-won new clothes in tighter to keep it in. The garb is an awful affair that Sebastian wouldn’t be surprised to find had been taken off some Ferelden refugee’s mouldering corpse.

Still, they are not bloodstained. He’ll take anything to make him stop feeling as though his very skin is a glowing beacon for templars, that they actually _can_ smell the magic in him. It’s—troubling, to say the least. Sebastian has known templars all his life, and they’ve been caricatures of holy warriors. Perrine was an overstuffed bulldog and Yannick would probably fall over without the spine of his silverite. Sebastian had been insulted as a teenager; he, a terrifying mage prince, being given _these_? Didn’t he deserve a knight-captain at least? It wasn’t until later that he appreciated the leniency of their watch.

But now that he is free—or as close to free as he has ever been, his life prior to magic being a different kind of cage—his thoughts drift to the heavy metal smell of Yannick’s breath, to the sudden, awful weight of magic hanging off his bones whenever Perrine passed the cell door. What would being Silenced be like? Would it be like drowning in that lyrium stench?

The idea is decidedly discomfiting. He covers himself and tries to will his magic away, and it’s a little suffocating in itself, a willful compression until he feels like crumpled parchment inside of his own skin, his lungs pneumonia-heavy.

If only it were truly so simple.

* * *

 

The Hanged Man is everything Sebastian remembers of taverns: crammed full of the most flavourful dregs of humanity, their stench and noise and colour blessedly overwhelming. The rafters are soot-blackened from countless years of sputtering torches and belching hearth fires, pipe-smoke and cigar-smoke and dripping-smoke. Sebastian finds himself coughing, but the raw scrape of his throat is _real_ , is _safe_ in its normalcy. There’s barely space to move between the tables crammed with drunken patrons and the wenches balancing mugs of who-knows-what, platters of overdone meat, and bowls of stodgy-looking stew.

“’Ey, you’re blockin’ everybody!” a woman snaps, and Sebastian stumbles in, tucking his hands deeper into his pockets. The tavern noise washes over him in a comforting wave, muffling the pound of his heart in his ears, the sudden dryness of his mouth. A handful of men and women pass him and he falls in behind, ending up at the bar, doing his best to look as tired and dirty as the rest. It’s not difficult. He hasn’t slept more than an hour at a stretch the past two days, and his last meal was a cold chewet pie stuffed with what he suspects was dog meat. His clothes, while clean, are still the cheapest he could find. He could easily pass for one of these Fereldans, if not for his skin and accent.

The woman beside him orders a whiskey. Sebastian motions for the same, paying his bits with a hidden grimace, and takes one sip. It’s terrible; he sips again. The bartender, a man of indeterminate age—not old, not young, his apron stained, his blondish hair sticking to his brow with sweat—is concentrated on pouring a row of shots, and doesn’t pause when Sebastian leans in to watch.

“You can spit in that one, if you like,” the bartender says, tapping the final shot glass with the end of the bottle before sliding it back onto the shelf behind—all one quick, oiled motion. “Or were you after something else, serah?”

“I’ve a meeting with someone,” Sebastian says, rolling another copper along the undersides of his fingers. “And I’m hoping for some privacy.”

The bartender doesn’t react, just starts sliding the shots onto a wench’s waiting tray. As she bustles off, he’s already reaching behind him to grab a dark, fat jug and slop its contents. Thick, chunky liquid gurgles into a mug. A branded dwarf receives it with obvious relish.

“Some Fereldans sit over there. Not very friendly,” he says, nodding to Sebastian’s right. “Most folk leave them to themselves.”

Sebastian slides him the copper, which the bartender receives without a blink before turning to the next customer. Sebastian wedges his body through the crowds until he finds a seat with his back to the wall near a small handful of dicing men and women. They’re grimy even by the standards of the tavern, and raw-boned. It’s been about a year, Sebastian calculates, since the Blight; he would have thought most Fereldans would have settled in better by now. Apparently not.

His heart is hammering as he nods to them. One man eyes him suspiciously, but when Sebastian doesn’t make any move other than to sip his whiskey, returns to his game.

He sits, sips, and tries to remain calm. When Samson finds him, Sebastian has sunk into the shadows and his hands are clenched white-knuckled around the glass.

“This ain’t a good place,” is Samson’s greeting. His eyes are set in deep hollows, bloodshot and feverish in the smoky oil-light. Mysterious stains dot his fraying clothes, and he blinks too much, as if something has gotten caught in them and he can’t bring himself to get it out with a finger. “Why don’t we—“

“Please,” Sebastian says, sitting up and squaring his shoulders. “Sit.”

Samson grimaces, but sits. His fingers immediately start drumming on the tabletop. “Look,” he says, hunching and peering into Sebastian’s face. Sebastian can smell the lyrium on his breath, metallic and sour—impure, cut with something Sebastian can’t identify. “I get it. You’re being careful. But we’d really do a lot better elsewhere. Guards come in here every so often, and they know me.”

“That’s why your back is to the door,” Sebastian replies, putting on his most reassuring smile; Samson wrinkles his nose. “The faster we come to an arrangement, the faster you can leave, serah.”

He was a templar, once, and that alone makes Sebastian nervous—but Sebastian doesn’t have the time or coin to dig up anyone else. The other templars know about Samson, but they also scorn him, and Sebastian can only hope that will keep him safe.

Samson gives a twitch of a shrug and knots his hands together. They tremble faintly. The man can’t seem to stop fidgeting, as if he veins are trying to crawl from under his skin. “Alright, alright. It goes like this. Got a carrack loading for Antiva City. Big ships always lose a few sailors each docking here, so they’re looking for extra hands. We get you signed on; you do the job and don’t make noise. Everybody goes home happy.”

“I presume there are no guarantees beyond my getting onto the ship,” Sebastian says. Samson spreads his hands, his smile no more than a crook of one lip that quickly disappears.

“Small price to pay, serah.” He threads his fingers back together. “And on the subject of prices—“

Sebastian closes his eyes. The noise of the tavern is jarring; he has become too used to silence. He likes the way it hides his breathing, the nervous tap of his foot against the floorboards.

“I have no tangible goods for you,” Sebastian says, catching Samson’s eye again. The man nods, waiting. Sebastian’s skin crawls, and his mouth feels dry with a strange kind of apprehension. Sipping his whiskey doesn’t help. “But I do have the patrol schedule for the Chantry grounds.”

Samson’s reddened eyes go bright. “That’ll do quite nicely,” he murmurs. “Now, lemme just rustle up some charcoal—“

A pair of hands clap onto Samson’s shoulders with an abruptness that makes Sebastian startle. Samson goes still, his eyes bulging like a cornered mouse. Sebastian stands quickly, bumping the table hard enough that the remains of his drink spill, pooling dark against the splintered wood.

“How about you rustle out of here, old friend,” the intruder says, his voice a purr that does _not_ sound like contentment. Sebastian’s bones ache with the effort of holding magic in, fear and danger making it roil inside of him like the caged tiger the Starkhaven menagerie once had: a starved, furious creature, whip-thin and snarling with terror. “This isn’t business for you today, not here.”

Samson’s throat bobs. He nods hard, his eyes rolling back in an effort to see the man. “Aye,” he squeaks. “Aye, that sounds like a brilliant idea, messere.”

“I thought so,” the intruder says. Sebastian firms his mouth into a thin smile, trying to relax his posture again as Samson is released and scuttles away so quickly he knocks into the Fereldans’ table, prompting growls of disapproval.

The intruder smiles at Sebastian, his mouth full and indolent as a cat’s against his blond beard. “You’ve got a pair on you, serah,” he says cheerfully, “coming here.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Sebastian says stiffly. “Nor do I appreciate you chasing my friend away.”

“Oh, come now,” he says, gesturing for Sebastian to sit again. Given his seat is covered in spilled whiskey, Sebastian doesn’t move. “We both know that Samson isn’t even his _own_ friend, let alone anyone else’s. And I’ve got some bad news for you,” he continues, rolling his shoulders and flopping into Samson’s seat, apparently unmoved by Sebastian’s decision to remain standing. “You’re a bit out of luck in the friend department, too.”

“I have the distinct impression that you’re displeased with me,” Sebastian says, trying for cold. He may have succeeded; he tries to believe that he has. “And I’m curious to know why I should care.”

The intruder’s smile spreads into a grin. He is a short, slender man dressed casually, his shirt only half-tucked into his trousers, his rough leather vest unbuttoned. His hair is choppy and blond, and an ugly scar puckers his left cheek and bites into the bridge of his nose. His teeth are crooked, but whiter than most’s. “Perceptive! Here,” he continues, slamming a blade into the tabletop with such speed that Sebastian jumps. “This’ll jog your memory.”

The dagger.

The dagger stares at him, its silverite sunk hungrily into the wood, its garnet eye gleaming. Sebastian’s stomach rolls.

“That—“

“Is mine,” the intruder says, his voice sweet. “I had to buy it back from the cheapest dealer in Lowtown, who told me, kind old soul, that a man from Starkhaven had threatened her with it before stealing all her money.”

“I did not steal from her!” bursts out of him, his hands balling into fists. “She scalped me, for one—“

Sebastian’s mouth flies shut, his teeth clicking together, as two and two become four: if this dagger is this man’s, then that means _he was there_. This man is a murderer and probably an abomination, if the magic that night meant anything, and now he knows that Sebastian, too, _was there_. Sebastian begins to perspire. The man smiles at him, one fingertip caressing the pommel like a cat’s ear.

“Scalped us both,” he says, giving a quick yank that pulls the dagger free. Sebastian can almost swear he can feel the silverite cutting the air, a brush of chill against the sweat gathering on his brow. “I’m quite annoyed that I had to pay for my own property.”

“What do you want?” Sebastian asks. His voice is admirably steady, considering.

“My money,” the intruder replies, laying the dagger on the tabletop and tenting his fingertips against the leather-bound hilt. “And, of course, the story of how you got your hands on it in the first place.”

This has the sense of a moment that can either go terribly or mortally wrong. Sebastian’s choices range from screaming to trying to cause a tavern brawl to bluffing. He can’t quite say whether he’d be able to keep his magic under control in a real fight, so... bluffing it is. He folds his arms and gives the man his best down-the-nose glare, learned at great personal cost from his brothers. He can only hope that it has the same belittling effect coming from him; he hasn’t tried it in front of a mirror since he was a foot shorter and losing control over his vocal chords on a regular basis.

“I owe you nothing. Leave now, before I call the guard,” Sebastian says. He is a _prince_. This gutter scum will not take his freedom from him, not after the amount of dung he’s had to roll in so far to keep it.

_Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start believing it again._

The man’s face lights up with a smile. “No, no—don’t budge yourself, serah,” he croons, and Sebastian’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. _Oh, bugger_. “Let’s just straighten this all out, hm? _I’ll_ call them.” He twists himself in his seat, cups his hands around his mouth, and bellows over the tavern noise, “AVELINE!”

There is no escape. The Fereldans on his right are watching with curiosity now, and his left is blocked off by a spontaneous arm-wrestling match between some massive sailors. He could flip the table and trample the barmaid and _maybe_ get out, but—

“Hawke,” the guard says, looming behind the man. She’s tall and _solid_ , built like a wall under her plated armor, ginger hair pulled behind her face in a no-nonsense tail. The fact that she’s still wearing the uniform in a tavern makes Sebastian’s stomach twist anxiously.

“Aveline,” the man, Hawke, says. His tone has taken on a wheedling tone. “This villain stole from me.”

The guard’s eyes settle on Sebastian. She looks him up and down quickly but critically; Sebastian has the feeling she’s not impressed, and rarely is. “What’s going on, serah?” she asks him. Tiredness and exasperation seem to leak from her every pore.

“I stole nothing,” Sebastian replies. He’s backed himself against the wall in what probably looks like an incriminating fashion, and pride is about the only thing keeping him from falling down entirely. “I was minding my own business when this-- _blackguard_ scared off—“

“He’s lying,” Hawke interrupts. “I told you I lost my good knife, right? This one pawned it off to Madam Vallez for a bloody sovereign.”

The guard arches her eyebrows and puts her hands on her hips. “You _lost_ your good knife,” she repeats. “Not exactly a misdemeanor, picking up something lying on the ground, Hawke. You would know,” she adds with a hint of irritation.

Sebastian can barely believe what he’s hearing. Is she... _defending him_? Is he actually going to survive this encounter? _Maker, if I do, I promise I will come dedicate half of my life’s wealth to Chantry coffers._

_Or, well, a quarter._

Hawke looks about as shocked by the direction Aveline has taken as Sebastian feels. He blinks at her. “I did not leave it lying on the ground,” he splutters. “I left it in the—“ he stops himself suddenly, and Sebastian knows, _knows_ , it’s because he was about to announce that he’d murdered a templar with it. “ _Aveline_ ,” Hawke continues, his voice a wheedling plea, his hands flapping in entreaty.

“What do you want me to do?” Aveline demands, spreading her hands right back. “I’m with the guard, not the Carta. As far as I can see you’re just being an ass.”

“I’m being robbed,” Hawke says mournfully, covering his face with his hands. Bits of beard poke through his scarred fingers like straw.

“Am I free to go, guardsman?” Sebastian asks. The guard nods at him.

“Yes, serah,” she says. “Forgive Hawke. He’s a dumb drunk. Have a peaceful evening.”

“I’m not nearly drunk enough for this,” Hawke grumbles. Sebastian is just starting to relax when the man snatches his knife from the tabletop, nearly startling magic out of his skin again. Sebastian clenches his teeth so hard his jaw aches. “ _Sorry_ ,” Hawke continues, his shoulders slumped in defeat as he sheathes the blade. Aveline rolls her eyes and turns back into the crowd, armor clanking as she returns to wherever she came from. The moment she’s out of earshot, though, Hawke leans forward again, fixing Sebastian with a penetrating look.

“You’re a smart man,” Hawke says, folding his hands together, all business. If he is drunk, he’s the most sober-seeming one Sebastian has ever met. “I’m impressed.”

There are quite a few replies Sebastian _wants_ to be give to that, all of them extremely imprudent—but they would be _so satisfying_ —and it takes a deep breath to swallow them down. “Our business, as it were, is finished,” he says, straightening himself to his full height again and trying to look imposing. Whether he succeeds or not is a question for the ages. “Please leave me be.”

Hawke rolls his eyes briefly, but seems to take the hint. He swings himself to his feet, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. “Fine,” he sighs. “But, you know, since good old Samson has flown the coop, I was going to offer you a drink of apology. I know how tough it is to get a hold of that weasel. You probably won’t see him for another month or two, ‘less you dig a pit in Darktown and fill it with lyrium.” The man’s eyes flick upward for a moment, as if he’s actually considering the idea. “Which might work, come to think of it.”

Bewilderment isn’t something that Sebastian ever expected to become such a frequent state of mind in his newfound freedom. Terror, of course, but he’s damnably used to that, knows how to deal with it. Being blindsided by lunatics wasn’t ever something he’d tried to prepare for. “Pardon?” he says. “Weren’t you not five minutes ago threatening me with _bodily harm_?”

Hawke has the temerity to look scandalized. “You read into things too deeply,” he says. “I’d just make your life miserable until you coughed up my coin,” he continues, waving a finger idly in the air. “But—let’s put this behind us. How about I introduce you to someone who’ll point you in a better direction than Samson?”

Sebastian knows, suddenly, that this is just another tactic. Hawke, while not the most subtle of manipulators, seems to be a stubborn one. Sebastian’s first instinct is to flee the Hanged Man and build a pit of lyrium to catch his way out of Kirkwall again. Except he sees through the crowd, over Hawke’s shoulder, the guardsman sitting with her back to the wall, watching the proceedings. The strange reassurance of her presence, combined with an honest need to sit down and try not to hyperventilate, prompt him to nod.

“Alright,” he says. “On the condition that I am allowed to leave when I want,” he adds, in a final, sad attempt at caution. “And I will fetch my own drink.”

Hawke’s laugh is surprisingly lighthearted, rather like an excited dog’s barking. “Follow me, serah,” he says. “I’ve got a tab with Corff and the best table in the house.”


End file.
